Olive Garden Gets an F! (in Healthy Restaurant Rankings)

But not necessarily because their food is so cholesterol or fat-laden--it's because they don't want to provide nutritional information to the customer.

Maybe keeping customers in the dark is better than admitting what's in their food?



Here are the rankings, graded as A, B, C, D, etc.

snip

The result is a Restaurant Report Card that holds each eating establishment fully accountable for the fare they’re serving up to all of us — moms, dads, kids, teens, and twentysomethings — along with a survival strategy for making it through any meal unscathed.

Rankings:

A
Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A excels in every category we tested for. With a slew of low-calorie sandwiches, the country’s “healthiest” chicken nugget, a variety of solid sides like fresh fruit and soup that can be substituted into any meal, and nutritional brochures readily available for perusing at each location, Chick-fil-A earns the award for America’s Healthiest Chain Restaurant (for kids, for the adults who drive them there, plus anybody else wise enough to make it their fast food choice).

A-
Subway
A menu based on lean protein and vegetables is always going to score well in our book. With more than half a dozen sandwiches under 300 calories, plus a slew of soups and healthy sides to boot, Subway can satisfy even the pickiest eater without breaking the caloric bank.

F
Applebee’s, IHOP, Olive Garden, Outback, Red Lobster, T.G.I. Friday’s
These titans of the restaurant industry are among the last national chains to not provide nutritional information on their dishes. Even after years of communication with their representatives, we still here the same old excuses: it’s too pricey, it’s too time-consuming, it’s impossible to do accurately because their food is so fresh. Our response is simple: If every other chain restaurant in the country can do it, then why can’t they?

For other restaurants ranked, see:

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/11230/americas-bestand-worstrestaurants/



Cher

:D

WTF? The fresher the food, the less processed it is, the EASIER it is to calculate nutritional value!

They usually come from engineered sources. There is no difference between the first piece made and the last piece. If there is quality control rejects it. It's the difference between working with uniform foods that all look and taste alike and natural foods who's contents can vary.

Subway has a few samwiches I like but they're all the high-fat ones. :D Never go to any of the others except Red Lobster (rarely, expensive) because I love lobster and it's the only place that serves it in this part of the world. :-)

weird vibe on DU that the Olive Garden is evil or something.

:popcorn:
:D

"Hoooboy" is right!



Cher

I highly recommend it to asian tourists.

I always come back from there drinking 10 glasses of water...

don't eat there anymore. they do have an awesome "sicilian chicken soup".

Some expensive, some not so much. I even go to Maggiones, and have always enjoyed their somewhat generic Italian food.

I have been to Olive Garden ONCE, when visiting family in WI. I don't recall which pasta I got, but I was thoroughly UNIMPRESSED. The pasta itself was horribly overcooked and mushy, and the ingredients in it were obviously all canned. Even the black olives. It was several years ago, and I may have misremembered some details, so I won't elaborate too much here. Just let it suffice to say I have no interest in going back.

How hard is it to make DECENT Italian food?? I can do way better at home.

it's pretty good. i get chicken cutlet (no cheese) with spaghetti. their meatballs are good too.

There are about 200 of them in NYC...only one original I heard.

i don't think it has anything to do with the one in new york. we have about 6 here and they all do well. i think it's one guy who owns all of them. the food is the same in all of them.

BTW. i'm a former new yorker.

Bucha Albanian dudes worked there. Made a good pizza.

that's one traffic light from Thunderbird.

yes. the owner is from Albania. Greenway was the first one he opened.

Went there every weekend and picked up pizza during grad school. Great cheap pizza. Can't beat Z Pizza for a chain though...http://www.zpizza.com/zpizza.php?page=locations

of business management" or ASU West?

MBA with a focus in International Project Management.

Good school. SHITTY placement program. That's why I donate zip. For 2 years I was under and unemployed. Other schools have people beating down your door. T-Bird? #1 ranked but refuses to invest in a decent job location program.

I made that point once and was told I was "expecting a career on a silver platter." to which I replied "No, just some leads on a Styrofoam plate."

Sometimes I think I should have gone the Fullbright Scholar path like some of my friends...but then again I'm rude, crass, and blunt when it come to describing things when not being vague and sarcastic. Meh...I'm doing OK thanks to myself and support from my wife and daughter.

hope you have a good job now.

I ended up in the former. Building that experience and hoping the world economy doesn't take a turn for the even worse.

I got here due to my own hard work and support from my own family!

Thanks for the well-wishing though!

for 39 years. he too worked very hard -- still does, but has been rewarded. not everyone is that fortunate.

Granted you just can't wait for it and expect it to happen but I have seen hard work go to nothing plenty.

people whose jobs were outsourced. :-(

over cooked. masked poor quality with lots of cheese. this was two weeks ago.

my wife makes better italian, and she grew up in asia.

That they pre-portion the sauces and maybe he said even the pasta. That way all they have to do is throw the contents (which are in plastic bags) in boiling water and serve it up. Idiot-proof the process.



Cher

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

more

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

and more

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

edited to add it appears my links won't work. Anyway, to answer your question, someone suggested eating at the Olive Garden when another poster had asked where to eat when they visited NY, Times Square if IRC. That was what began it all.

:shrug:

Edited that post to add more info since those links seem to no longer work.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x5279955

and i've seen some things, man...i've seen some stuff

Amazing what causes a hissy sometimes.

noticed how much cheese olive garden has added to their food. when you walk in it smells like cheese. the only thing i eat there is the pasta fagioli.

* Cheese Lovers Anti-Defamation League

Official Motto: "We cut the cheese in your general direction."

who doesn't like cheese. i don't understand why anyone would eat something that smells like vomit.

flame away.

We have complicated palettes, and enjoy things besides spaghetti-o's and chocolate milk.

:D

*Spaghetti-O Lover's Anti-Defamation League

Just a friendly warning.

?v=0

Mother's milk was healthier than formula! :wow:

The lounge LOVES a good Olive Garden thread! :bounce:

I'm just sayin

:puke:

kirk out.

i sent my food back and walked out.

:popcorn:

Maybe they'll finally go under and I can stop doing this.

Their food sucks, their restaurants are so noisy you can't hear yourself think and the prices are unbelievable.

I went there (against my will, kicking and screaming) with a group of about eight. I ordered "steak sandwich". Everybody else ordered something else. Despite all the orders being different, when the plates showed up they were so close to identical the waitress couldn't tell the order apart. Everything looked like cut-up four-day-hangover eyeballs in albino garden worms except for my steak sandwich which looked like a cow's eye painted black on burnt toast. Then the waitress wanted to dump cheese on everything including my steak sandwich.

we just got one in Tucson and I was looking forward to a new junkfood grease experience, but it is healthy? fuck that shit:rofl:

for chains like Applebee's, IHOP, Olive Garden, etc: don't eat there! Patronize local businesses instead.

(Did I wander into the Lounge by mistake?)

God it was funny.

Will not even tell you what is in their crap.

Did you know that they add pancake batter to their scrambled eggs, that is what makes them "fluffy"

They are a heart attack waiting to happen.. I will not even park near one